Philomela's Legacy: Rape, the Second World War, and the Ethics of Reading

Abstract

This article addresses the ethical quandaries of the wartime rape of German women by Russian soldiers during the last months of the war. In particular, I discuss the multiple challenges involved in reading such rapes: the danger of identifying the victimization of these women with the victimization of the German nation; the danger of trivializing or downplaying the suffering of the rape victim; the challenge of writing about rape without recycling Nazi narratives. Rape is, as Sabine Sielke maintains, “a dense transfer point for relations of power.” My readings show that, when wartime rape is made to serve an ideological agenda, as it inevitably is, the experience of the victim, her trauma and pain, threaten to disappear amidst the noise of justifications, metaphors, and political deployments. Drawing on the mythical model of Philomela, I argue that there is a legacy of violence in both silence and in writing, but there is also an ethics of reading that allows one to pay tribute to the victims’ suffering even as one negotiates and recontextualizes their stories.

The mass rapes of 1945 in contemporary memory culture: The (gender) politics of metaphor and metonymy

“…This passage is consistent with many literary and autobiographical accounts of wartime rape, in which the violent act is evoked ‘in quasi-formulaic language, but not narrated extensively’ (Krimmer, 2015a: 83). Such a rhetoric of allusion has developed in part due to the stigma attached to the experience of rape.…”

“…However, this fragmentary chatter rarely generated sustained public conversations about the mass rapes. For much of the 20th century, public discourse surrounding wartime rape was dispersed, sporadic and highly symbolic, shaped as it was by broader debates about the Nazi past and German identity (Cohen-Pfister, 2006; Dahlke, 2007; Gebhardt, 2016; Heineman, 1996; Krimmer, 2015a). Levels of public engagement with wartime rape thus function as a barometer for both memory and feminist politics in the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic and now the so-called Berlin Republic.…”

“… 7. Red Army officers describe their encounters with German women as seduction in narratives discussed by Krimmer (2015a: 86) and Jacobs (2008: 8). On misogynistic attitudes towards women within the Red Army and in Soviet discussions of rape, see also Merridale (2005: 340) and Bischl (2012: 117–133). …”

Props and Prostheses: Lavinia the “speechless complainer”

“…Elisabeth Krimmer, discussing the dilemma of Philomela's narrative and legacy, explains that "narratives of rape are often suspended halfway between silence and discourse", as both victims and spectators are unsure of how to achieve a therapeutic release but not a "reinscription of the original trauma". 16 Philomela's tapestry bridges the silence to the therapeutic release in the re-inscription of her assault in the form of artistic salvation. Arthur Golding's 1567 translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses describes Philomela's expressive discovery: "Great is the wit of pensivenesse, and when the head is rakt / With hard misfortune, sharpe forecast of practise entereth in."…”